'68: The Year of the Barricades

Caute's book looks at the explosive year 1968 (while situating it in the context of what had led up to it). One of the great strengths of this excellent book is that it looks at what was happening around the world.

Abstract: The political, social and cultural upheavals of the 1960's are of continuing interest as we try to resist the conservative pressures of the present. Caute's book looks at the explosive year 1968 (while situating it in the context of what had led up to it). One of the great strengths of this excellent book is that it looks at what was happening around the world: a valuable corrective to the U.S.-centred perspective of so many other books on the period. Caute gives much attention to the relationship between the "New Left" and the sixties "counter-culture", noting the continuing tension (but also fruitful interaction) between the "intellectual platoons" and the "apostles of instinct and feeling". Fundamental to all New Left movements, he says, "was a vision of a world undivided by race, class, or gender", a vision that was ultimately to be fractured by the contradictions of race and gender. 68: The Year of the Barricades is a lively and instructive history woven through with thought-provoking analysis.

[Abstract by Ulli Diemer]

Table of Contents

IntroductionPrologue: The Pentagon1. The Vietnam War - Tet2. The Antiwar Movement: America, Europe, Japan3. The New Politics of the Young4. Children of Pleasure - The Counter-Culture5. Insurrection in Europe: Poland, Italy, Spain, France and Britain6. Insurrection in Europe: Germany and West Berlin, Belgium and Yugoslavia7. The USA, the Democratic Primaries and Draft Resistance8. The USA - Black Power9. Columbia10. Prague Spring11. France: Students and Workers12. France: Agitators and Politicians13. Films, Sex and Women's Liberation14. Radical Theatres15. The Democrats at Chicago16. The Other Chicago - Yippies and Pigs17. Czechoslovakia - The Soviet Invasion18. Britain: The Student Revolt19. Militant Students, Angry Professors20. A Season of Violence: Mexico, Europe and Japan21. The USA: Black Students, White Teachers22. Prague Winter23. Decline of the New Left